When she lived in North Carolina years ago, she tried to grow the plant, whose leaves can be used for tea and alleviate stomachaches — to no avail.

Golding, 50, finally succeeded two years ago, when she started an Asian garden in Vermont with her partner, Peter Aube. A Vermont native from a farming family, Aube turned out to have a green thumb for Asian vegetables, she said. They started the bitter melons indoors.

Golding pointed out the green fruit in her Asian garden in Charlotte on a recent August evening as the sun set and insects buzzed in the grass.

"We make tea, we make stir fry out of this," Golding said. "It has a really potent, bitter taste, but it's something you get used to. A lot of health benefits with this one."

Golding is among several Vermont farmers and gardeners who grew up outside the United States and are reaping harvests of vegetables they're familiar with. They are expanding the diversity of Vermont's crops to include new forms of eggplants, gourds, herbs, rice and root vegetables, with some concessions for the New England climate.

Cultivating land here provides a "common thread" of culture for many immigrants and refugees, said Ben Waterman, who assists some of the farmers through the New Farmer Project with University of Vermont Extension.

Gardener Elvie Golding, who is from the Philippines, shows on Aug. 5 some of the produce she grows at her home garden in Charlotte.

(Photo: ALDEN PELLETT/FOR THE FREE PRESS)

"They feel much more at home," Waterman said. "They feel much more confident and much more lively. ... You've got multiple generations on the same plot, so the granddaughter will be helping the grandmother — that's a very common sight."

As he helps farmers study soils and combat pests, Waterman also learns about new varieties of crops — and he watches farmers who originally came from different continents helping one another with common challenges.

"It is a cultural exchange," Waterman said. "We're learning as much from the farmers as we are helping them out or teaching."

The Burlington Free Press met up with Golding and two other gardeners this month to discuss their crops and the significance of having a piece of land to cultivate.

Gardener Elvie Golding, who is from the Philippines, shows on Aug. 5 eggplant harvested from her garden in Charlotte.

One side has traditional American vegetables like tomatoes, corn, and potatoes. The other side is filled with vegetables from China, Japan, Thailand, Korea and Hawaii. It's the only garden in the area Golding knows of that specializes in Asian vegetables.

"I used to harvest and cook for the farmers. That's why I know how to cook," Golding said. "I was nine years old — I learned how to cook because in the Philippines, you know, you help your family."

She moved to the United States when she was 22 years old.

Until Golding started the Asian garden, she would have to drive to Albany, Boston or to Canada to get vegetables she needed for her recipes.

"Why can't we just try to grow them locally?" Golding wondered.

Golding and Aube start some seeds in the kitchen, sheltering them from spring in Vermont, and use a greenhouse for others. Their work starts every year in January and culminates with the peak season in August.

"It's just too much for just me and my partner," Golding said. "So we share it with our friends and people that wanted to try."

The garden has become a gathering point for local Asian communities and others interested in Asian foods and cooking. Some families bring their children at the end of the season, she said.

"It's fun because they're excited," Golding said. "They actually teach their kids all different kind of vegetables that we normally eat back home, you know? They've never seen it, so now they can."

She has taro, Chinese cucumbers, radishes, yard-long beans, two varieties of eggplants, sweet potato and a type of Asian pepper.

"My mom sent me this," Golding said as she pointed toward upo, a Filipino gourd. "She goes, 'You cannot eat the big one all by yourself, so I'm going to give you the short variety.'"

Most of the seeds came through the mail from Golding's friends and family in Hawaii. Other seeds, like garlic chives, have come from friends in Vermont.

She has also incorporated some regional specialties, like fiddleheads, into her cooking.

"I never had fiddleheads in my life until I came to Vermont," Golding said.

She demonstrates her cooking at farmers markets.

"There are a lot of Americans that are interested in our culture," she said. "Our food is our culture, so I kind of like to share."

Ganesh and Indra Adhikari’s son Aadhitya, 5, holds up a leaf of a red variety of a plant called “palange” back in their native Bhutan that they use to make curry. The family grows both the red and a green variety of the plant at their community garden plot at the Intervale.

(Photo:
RYAN MERCER/FREE PRESS
)

Curry ingredients for a family

Indra Adhikari comes to the Ethan Allen Homestead in Burlington with her husband, Ganesh, and their son.

Her son Aadhitya, who turns 5 in September, loves the garden, she said. As she leads a tour, Aadhitya runs through the rows, picking leaves and tomatoes. At school, he once said he wanted to be a gardener when he grew up.

Indra Adhikari picks leaves from a green variety of a plant called “palange,” a good source of iron and a staple in Bhutanese cooking.(Photo: RYAN MERCER/FREE PRESS)

Together, they grow potatoes, mustard greens, beans, turnips, radishes and tomatoes — and a plant called "palange" in Nepali, whose leaves and stems are used for curry.

"Sometime I also take my mom. ... She loves to visit here," Adhikari said.

Some of her plants are used for medicinal purposes, like dill, which she said is traditionally added to meat soup and used to treat aches and pains.

At home, she has a small herbal plant called tulasi, which she grew from seeds from Nepal and is used in teas to treat coughs and colds. "We used to say that it was a holy plant," she said.

Some of the seeds came from Nepal with other Bhutanese immigrant refugees, said Adhikari, who has lived in Vermont for three years. Last year she had a small plot at Ethan Allen Homestead through the New Farms for New Americans program; this year she took a larger one.

Indra Adhikari carries a few sprigs of dill, a leaf of red “palange” and a few cherry tomatoes that her son Aadhitya handed her while touring the family’s community garden plot at the Intervale.

(Photo:
RYAN MERCER/FREE PRESS
)

The mustard greens are gone from the garden by August, but she said they preserve them for the winter.

First they dry the stem and leaves in the sun, then they put them into a container, where it turns sour and yellow, then they dry the plant again in the sun until it is crunchy.

Adhikari uses the preserved mustard greens and radishes for what she said is the national curry of Nepal.

And it's not only for the winter: "If we do not have anything to cook, we use that for emergency curry," she said, laughing.

Janine Ndagijimana, whose family originally came from Burundi, carries a bucket half full of eggplants as she picks her harvest on Aug. 19 at a large garden plot at Ethan Allen Homestead in Colchester. She hopes to introduce the African varieties of eggplant to Vermonters.

(Photo:
ALDEN PELLETT/FOR THE FREE PRESS
)

An eggplant business

A few plots away from Adhikari's family garden, Janine Ndagijimana is growing a dream.

This is the second year she has grown eggplants, though last year's iteration was just a very small plot. This year she bought more than a third of an acre, a much larger space than many other farmers who work with New Farms for New Americans.

As Vermonters get used to the new eggplant varieties, she hopes to expand her business onto an even larger plot of land. It's the largest plot of African varieties of eggplants that she knows of.

"In Africa, people like it, and it's one of the favorite types of food that Africans like, and I think it has a lot of value," Ndagijimana said through a translator, Pacifique Nsengiyumva.

She grows three eggplant varieties that can be found in Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya and Nigeria, she said. They're called "intore" in the Kirundi language, her translator said, and Ndagijimana fries them with meat or boils them for soup.

Ndagijimana, whose parents were from Burundi, was born in a refugee camp in Rwanda. As a refugee, she did not have enough space to grow eggplants, she said, though she planned to start whenever she could find a place.

Janine Ndagijimana, whose family originally came from Burundi, shows one of the African varieties of eggplant she is growing in a large garden plot at Ethan Allen Homestead in Colchester, Vt., August 19, 2014. She hopes to commercially introduce the African varieties of eggplant to Vermonters.(Photo: ALDEN PELLETT/FOR THE FREE PRESS)

After she came to Vermont in June 2007, she saved eggplant seeds to start the garden. "It's just my own thinking and my own ambition to start with," said Ndagijimana, who lives in Burlington.

Now she hopes to support her family, with five children, based on the income from her eggplants and maybe other crops.

Waterman, the UVM Extension organizer, has helped her with fertilization, pest control and water systems. The eggplants are a little bitter, he said — less mushy, and more like a green pepper than the eggplants that most Vermonters would be familiar with.

Vermont presents its own growing challenges, of course: The weather turns cold during the harvest season, limiting the yield. In Africa, she said, she could harvest eggplants through January.

She's encouraged by the interest she has found so far, though, as she has shared the plant with Vermonters — and someone from Texas has already contacted her through Facebook with interest in buying the eggplants, she said.

"My dream is to be able to do a lot of crops ... And also to be able to supply in Vermont markets so that other people benefit," Ndagijimana said.

Ganesh and Indra Adhikari’s son Aadhitya, 5, runs through a small path carved out of a field in the Intervale, heading to his family’s community garden plot where the family hangs on to tastes from their home in Bhutan by growing them in Vermont.